


... Sometimes I wake up...

by Fangirlingmanaged



Series: God Knows I... [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Everyone Needs Therapy, Hurt Steve, Hurt Tony, M/M, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Steve Feels, Steve Needs a Hug, Tony Being Tony, Tony Feels, Tony Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 01:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5355878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlingmanaged/pseuds/Fangirlingmanaged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain America once said "I wake up, and they say we won."<br/>Well, he knows exactly how much bullshit that is. Because this isn't winning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	... Sometimes I wake up...

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK YOU AGE OF ULTRON!  
> I finished my essays (4) and I am now dead, but...  
> HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIIIIIIIIDE!

Waking up in an underground bunker is a very strange feeling. Or, well, it’s not an underground bunker but more of an underground facility. It’s not like the facility in which Von Strucker had put him and his sister when they were kids. It’s not cold and damp like that was, he’s not in a cell, and there is a distinct lack of his sister. And he’s so fucking comfortable. His eyes snap to the side and he notices the machines next to his bed; God, his head feels like crap. How long was he out? The last thing he remembers is the archer’s horrified face and the kid crying into his chest. Are they okay? Did he manage to help them? Did they die? Wait, is _he_ dead? He tries to sit up, and his chest, sides, and basically every inch of his body explodes in pain. Okay, nope, he’s definitely alive.

“Hey, stay down, kid,” a voice says from his left. He snaps his head to the side, _fucking ow!_ And notices two dark eyes looking down at him. That stupid goatee thing. Ew, Stark, what the hell?

“Wouldn’t you like that?” Pietro tells him. The other man chuckles and shakes his head, but pushes him back down when Pietro tries to move. Okay, fuck, that was a bad idea. He’s still not going to let the asshole manhandle him though. “You’re lucky I’m stuck to these machines, Stark.”

The other man just rolls his eyes. “I’m sure, kid. How about you tell me how you’re feeling huh? So that the doctors don’t touch you in appropriate places. Unless that’s your thing, which if it is, then by all means. Nurse Pataki is a pretty little thing, might even be your type,” the other man wiggles his eyebrows and Pietro barks out an involuntary laugh.

“Fuck, _ow_ , you’re a dirty old man, Stark,” the other man just grins down at him. “Where’s, uh, the other one?” Pietro fiddles with his blanket. If he’s okay, then Clint’s okay, right? His sister?

“Your mother is fine,” Stark smirks at him. “He’s sleeping right now. Has been here and with your sister every day. She’s fine, by the way. A little emotionally strung out, but you know, it’s to be expected.” His eyes go far away for a second before he seems to snap himself out of his reverie. Pietro has so many questions, but then the doctors are coming in and then Clint comes in and talks with him briefly about what’s going on.

The gist of it is that he is dead. At least, he’s dead to the rest of the population of planet earth and that includes his sister. The only reason Stark knows is because he’s a meddling little shit, and so is Clint, and Cap had made sure that he was kept alive. Pietro discovers, about a week later, that the redhead also knows that he’s alive. Honestly, do these weirdos know what a secret is?

“ _Pietro!”_ Tony’s voice yells from down the hall. Pietro rolls his eyes because, honestly, sweet mother of baby Jesus. He’s supposed to be dead! Even in an underground facility people can fucking hear! Not to mention he’s supposed to be in the training room with his rehabilitation shit so he can get to running away. Definitely not supposed to be in the kitchen sneaking lemon pie slices and cola pops out of the fridge. Which is a stupid rule, okay, because he’s supposed to be getting his strength back and—oh, okay, Stark is in a mood. Shit. “How many damn times do I have to tell you shit, kid?”

“Relax, Stark, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“This isn’t the time for you to be messing around, Maximoff. You need to get back to training,” and Pietro just looks at him. This is the man that, a few days ago, had let Pietro use his repulsor boots to see if they would last with his speed. Stark has only been serious _once_ in all the time Pietro has known him, and that was in Sokovia. Even then he’d been cheeky as all hell. He’s looking strange too, he notes, worried and run down. What the hell is up with him?

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Okay, Pietro could have voiced that better. Stark slammed his hand down on the counter. “Should I go get Cap? Is this a couple thing?” Stark rears back as if he had been slapped, but his face goes dark right the next second. It scares Pietro, a bit, the change in him so suddenly.

“Cap is gone,” his voice is devoid of emotion. He completely steamrolls over Pietro who has his mouth open, and his eyes widened. _How the fuck is Cap gone?_ He thinks, _and why is Stark so damn pissed?_ “He’s gone back after Bucky.”

Ah, there it is. A flicker of emotion. Betrayal and hurt and anger. Fucking shit. Pietro knows a bit about Bucky Barnes. When he’d first started on his training again he had snuck around the building, discovering all its nooks and crannies hiding from Cap and Stark, and playing pranks on people with Clint when he managed to visit. Getting to be a kid, really, for a bit as he hadn’t been allowed in a long time. Had known that from the moment Cap told Tony about Bucky they’d been cold and stiff with each other. Stark could find fault with Steve at any turn because of him.

“You’re still on that shit?” he’d snapped once when they had been alone in one of the meeting rooms. Pietro had come to an abrupt halt behind the door. He had hidden around the corner from the window wall. Okay, so if he was caught there would be hell to pay, but whatever. He had never been the smart one.

“Really? That’s what you’re gonna call it? He’s my best friend, Tony.”

“Then what the fuck am I, Cap?” His voice was harsh. Pietro chanced a look around the corner and saw Cap fisting his hands in anger; the veins in his arms bulging.

“You’re the man I love, but he’s important to me, Tony. I’ve never lied. I care about you deeply, you know that.” There was a pleading note in his voice.

“You sure about that? Cause it sounds like you’re damn ready to go be his bitch now,” the tone of his voice was nasty. He was aiming to hurt the Captain, his fucking lover, over this.

“Like you’re any different!” Steve had yelled. And wow, okay, Cap packed a lot of anger and command in that tone. It made _Pietro_ , completely uninvolved in their argument, feel dirty. Eeesh.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I never pictured Tony Stark as the media’s bitch. Since when does the government tell you what to do, Tony? Since when do you just roll over for what they want? ‘This bill is the answer we were looking for. The SHRA is going to protect us. This is going to keep us safe.’ The fuck is that, Tony? How many times do we have to play this game?”

“Since when do _you_ turn your back on the people of this country? Isn’t that your whole schtick, _sweetheart_ , to be the self-righteous asshole in this relationship? Since when do I have to protect people because you won’t?” and okay, wow, that was _low._ Could see it in the way that, right when he poked his head around, could feel Steve’s body trembling. Could see it in the way Tony’s eyes widened as he realized what he had done. Nobody, and he means nobody, had been allowed to mock the way Steve used sweetheart to refer to Tony. Fuck.

“Since when do you willingly kill people, huh, Stark?” Steve managed hoarsely, and Pietro know that the next words out of his mouth would burn him. “The title of Merchant of Death not household name enough anymore for you?”

“Mindless parade monkey not common enough for _you_ , Mon Capitan?” Tony smirked his horribly fake smile. Pietro’s heart was beating harshly in his chest. This couldn’t be fucking happening. They couldn’t be starting this shit again.

“I’m not doing this with you, Stark,” aaaaaaand there went the pain for Tony. Jesus Christ what a right mess they were making of this. “Can you, for one second, put yourself in my position and think about what you would do if this were Rhodey?”  
“I would look for him to the ends of the earth,” Tony told him sincerely. From the quick look Pietro got, they weren’t paying attention but he wasn’t about to fucking risk getting their anger on him, his eyes looked glassy. His cheeks were flushed, and he kept that horrible tapping on his nightlight. Steve must have opened his mouth to say something because Tony continued quickly, “with the difference that he’s never killed any innocents. He’s never tried to kill his best fucking friend. You working for HYDRA now, Stevie?”

There was a horrible crashing sound from the meeting room, and then Cap stormed right past Pietro without noticing. He was so blinded by rage that he didn’t notice him standing there. Pietro stood there, paralyzed with uncertainty, until long after the Captain had gone. The last thing Pietro saw after that meeting was the broken form of Tony Stark, on his knees, with his head on his hands and his shoulders shaking.

                                                                                      ***

After that, Pietro had made it his mission to find out what was happening. He kept going to the control room so often that an announcement had to be made to let him roam free. The whole facility knew about his survival within the day. So, he had been privy to what Tony had been privy to. Had known that Steve was fighting to find Bucky, and had seen that Tony had been fighting for the SHRA while at the same time trying to maintain Steve as guiltless as possible.

The most notable of these was the interview a week before the confrontation that had, literally, torn Tony’s heart out. Pietro had snuck into the control room where all of Tony’s appearances were monitored for his safety only to find Natasha alone in front of the monitors. Recently, she had become his sole companions as all of SHIELD had been focused on what was going on in the outside world. She was as well, but she still spent time in HQ. He knew she was working in something very important, something for _after_ , but he never bothered to ask. It’s not like he didn’t care, but more that she wouldn’t say anything.

Pietro hadn’t been allowed out of the facility. Everything he knew was from what he saw on TV, but this didn’t make him a Tony supporter. He’d seen his sister fighting for Cap, and had become blinded with rage. If Wanda was with Cap then surely Stark was in the wrong. Natasha had been there to knock him around a bit, had let him into control rooms and research rooms so that he would look for his own answers, but had also tried to sell him their pitch. Had tried to get him on Stark’s camp, and had informed him that he couldn’t go topside. Couldn’t add himself as a distraction when they were already fighting another person HYDRA had demonized.

Then, Natasha had looked up at him and patted the chair next to her. She was leaning over the controls, her face intent on Tony’s face, while her eyes jumped from what Tony was saying to the surveillance they had around Steve’s last known location.

“—is an idiot,” Tony was saying on camera. He looked like he had just finished a press conference. There was an easy grin on his face, but his eyes were covered with those infernal sunglasses that Pietro had come to recognize as his very tangible wall. “He’s naïve, I don’t think we can fault him for that. My dad,” Natasha’s hand curled into a fist at the almost undetectable hitch in his voice, “always said that he was loyal to a fault. This is all it is. He’s not some sort of criminal; he’s Captain America, for Christ’s sake. He’s been cleaning our dirty laundry for, almost literally, a century. Do we honestly think a man like that would hurt our country? If anything, he’s just been misguided by his good intentions. Let’s focus on that.”

“So you think Bucky Barnes is playing his good heart for his own plans?” the eager reported almost shoved his microphone into his face. Tony reared back, and Natasha hissed next to him.

“He’s trying to set him up to blame Barnes,” Natasha explained to him unnecessarily. Pietro already knew the political agenda the American media seemed to have.

“That’s nowhere near what I said,” Tony said sternly. “ _Sergeant Barnes,”_ he emphasized, “fought for this country in one of the bloodiest wars we ever entered. He was brainwashed by a terrorist organization that has been active for decades. He _has been_ brainwashed for decades. I want him to stop hurting people, yes, but I also think we should be more humane about it. It’s not his fault that he’s been turned into a monster.” Pietro frowned, if it was true that Barnes had been turned into a killer then it didn’t seem right to call him a monster. He sure as hell wasn’t a monster; Pietro had read the stories and watched the reels of Steve and Bucky’s friendship. Bucky had never been anything but a good man.

“Mr. Stark!” a woman yelled, and Tony turned to him. The lines in his face indicated he was growing tired. “if Captain Rogers,” and holy shit they’d even stripped Steve of the title he had literally been frozen for, “were watching you right now, what would you like to say?”

Tony froze for a second staring at the woman. There were like six different angles of the twisted expression in his face, and the hand that came up to tap at the reactor. He took off his glasses, and Pietro understood why he wore them. There was naked honesty in there, it made _Pietro’s_ heart hurt. “Steve,” he said softly, looking at the camera. Natasha and Pietro were transfixed on his expression. In the painful sincerity of his face and voice. “Just come home. Stop this senseless war, Steve. _Please,”_ he said hoarsely. “Just come _home.”_ The _“_ come back to _me_ ” naked on his voice. He seemed to remember where he was because he gave an absentminded “thank you” before he got into his car.

Pietro heard Natasha mutter something like _“You lovesick idiot,”_ in Russian next to him.

That was the last time Pietro saw Tony _whole_. He would be told, later, about the damage Steve had done to his hand after that.

                                                                                      ***

Now, his knee bounces anxiously on his journey to the New Avengers facility where the team is. Natasha had told him that it was about time that he come out of the shadows. Clint was sitting next to him, staring out the window with a pinched expression in his face. The worries of the last few weeks had aged him. Pietro could see Phil throwing glances at them on the rearview mirror. God, Pietro hated war. He hated it what it did to people. To his friends. His _family_.

Clint doesn’t say anything when they get to the facility, but merely escorts Pietro down the many winding corridors to where his sister is. He’s anxious to see her. She’ll be angry with him, he knows, for keeping the fact that he was alive from her. It was always supposed to be the two of them against the world, but… the truth is that he couldn’t think of an outcome where they would have agreed. Like with Ultron, he would have doubted her judgement. Would have thought something was off with siding with Cap, and it would have torn him apart. Would have torn their siblinghood apart. He’s afraid of her reaction, yes, but he’s glad for it. He saw the worse of Tony and Steve, so he’s glad he wasn’t there to have to pick a side.

On his way to Wanda, they pass the wing where Tony is. He can see the other man through the glass window, and stops dead on his feet. Horror spreads down his spine and leaves him chill. Steve did that? How could he have done that? The other man is a mess; broken and bruised and… just God, what the fuck is this? He fears blinding rage consume him for a minute until he hears the murmuring. His eyes snap to the side, where the closed door is, and sees Steve curled up on himself. His knees up to his chest, and his crying face hidden by them. Barnes is talking to him, slow and soft, as his hand strokes up and down his back. Pietro moves toward him, to comfort or punch him he doesn’t know, but Clint stops him with a hand on his arm.

The movement catches their attention, though, and Steve’s head snaps up. He’s a downright mess, all right. Bruises under his eyes, greasy hair, gaunt face… he looks like a fucking ghost. How is this man the same Captain that he met at Von Strucker’s? Steve’s eyes snap to his, and the horror he’d felt for Tony doubles. Those usually vibrant, determined eyes… they look empty. Like looking at victims of the worse sort of horrors. Those black and white pictures of survivors that you see in textbooks. What is left of Steven Rogers in there?

**Author's Note:**

> Update: I never imagined I'd be doing this in a creative work that I enjoyed writing very much but the more you know. This is for any further confusion. Repost from the one and only time I explained why I chose to write something the way I did.   
> "
> 
> I hope you notice that I'm not defending Steve In this as much as I'm showing that there's another part to Tony that makes him be judged by everyone for being someone who simply doesn't care. The POVs of these events are from someone who a) wasn't a very big fan of Tony's and b) wasn't aware of all the workings of Tony's mind. He's not completely guiltless because he has reasons to be defensive and want to be hurtful because he himself Is hurting. That doesn't help with his situation, or his feelings or his fear. For an outsider, especially someone who doesn't him well, and Immediately assumes Cap would be the better option, no duh, they think Tony's a hurtful asshole. As you can see, if you pay attention, Natasha isn't acting as if she still didn't like Tony. she's protective and cautious. The wonderful thing about having different POVS in war is that we see the other side too. It doesn't mean yours matters less or that your hurt isn't justified, bit in grey area wars such as this one where both sides are doing something wrong (I have a soft soft spot for Bucky, scapegoating is never okay with me, and is have never agreed with the SHRA) and I'm not going to immediately go for Tony's side. And okay, the Maximoff kids. Honestly, and forgive me for saying it so bluntly, but I've never given a shit about "what's expected of a character," IIf I had none of this would have been written. I never for a second excused what Pietro and Wanda did. I don't approve of following something on blind fate the way they did, and I also saw Pietro's conflict with what they were doing, and I saw him hesitating in some things. Pietro's the one that went to the Avengers easier. Sort of like "you know what, sis, we were wrong now let's help them." I also so state in the fic that he's allowed to do his research and that's why he stays. The story revolves around hown he's involved with Steve and Tony, but I Intended for it to have the feelING that Pietro wasn't resentful about Tony. Him being a little shit is just how Intended, how I imagined his character to be, and I think that's pretty clear because of how he acts with Clint in the fic. Lastly, this chapter was hard to write because I wanted to explain everything Tony did, like many of you, with what we know of his defense mechanisms. The truth is, though, that there were many people who didn't know what it was. Pietro isn't omniscient and he still doesn't know tony well enough to know that. And as I mentioned since the very beginning, I intend for this to have aan ending where they both get together because the truth is that both of them were hurt in the process. You might also not like the next fics that try to explain why Steve did certain things and that, like Tony, sometimes he's an asshole for understandable reasons. If thats the case, then thank you for reading so far. There's plot and occurrences before the big battles where they were both hurtful with each other despite their motives. They went at each other's weak spots because nobody knows them better than the other person. Despite my bias for Tony, I want to make that perfectly clear. If you have a question about Maria Stark and the impact that had in Tony I was withholding creative liscence about that till I could do more research. So that I can play with the ambiguity of her character and tony's knowledge of her death. They're not my characters, but I get to choose how this particular story goes. Furthermore, I have stated from the beginning that this is based mostly on the mcu(it's in the tags too) and WHAT LITTLE I KNOW OF THE COMICS. As much as I love Tony, I was always divided with Civil War. Seeing as how I don't like how it demonized Tony I WILL NOT do Steve a disservice and demonize him here too. I love those guys too much for that If this doesn't apply to you and you read it though, thank you. And I'm sorry if this story isn't going as you wanted it, but I write things as they come up in my head."


End file.
